


The Forgotten

by FireflyAlchemist



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Married Olicity, mid season 4-ish, olicity - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:14:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24465547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflyAlchemist/pseuds/FireflyAlchemist
Summary: Felicity Smoak wakes up in Sweden, with no memory of the past seven years, and the only clue to her past a boyfriend who mysteriously reappeared from the dead and a hasty note scrawled on her skin.
Relationships: Oliver Queen/Felicity Smoak
Comments: 24
Kudos: 107





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> ***PLEASE READ*** So the moral of this story is don't start a fic before you totally have a plan bc I've changed some stuff since I originally posted this chapter. Mia is not a thing here anymore--Oliver and Felicity are married but they haven't had her yet. Sorry about that. 
> 
> Original note: So basic notes for this fic: it takes place circa 2019 but essentially diverges from canon around the end of season 4. Cooper Seldon is still alive, Felicity and Oliver are married.

She woke up in Sweden. Of course, when she woke up, she didn’t know this, since the dingy apartment with light fixtures half-falling out of the ceiling and paint that was chipped through at least three layers didn’t exactly scream Scandinavia. She blinked, trying to remember where in the world she was. Everything around her was slightly blurry, and it took her a moment to realize that she didn’t have her glasses on. Instinctually, she reached for the bedside table, where she always placed her glasses before bed.

“Felicity! Baby, are you all right?”

She nearly jumped out of her skin at the voice. She looked up and saw a blurred figure sitting beside her. The voice sounded familiar, but she couldn’t quite place it.

“Here,” the figure said, shoving something into Felicity’s hands.

Looking down, she realized it was a pair of glasses. They were different from her own, but figuring something was better than nothing, she put them on. Blinking, she glanced around, somewhat surprised to see that the prescription matched her own nearly perfectly. The room was almost bare, and just as dingy as it had appeared without her glasses on, except now she could clearly make out the spots of water damage on the walls and the hairline fractures in the window across from her. “Where am I?”

The figure moved forward a bit, so the dwindling light from the window landed across his face, illuminating it for the first time.

Felicity stiffened. “Cooper? But you’re dead!” Before he could respond, her mouth did what it always did in an anxiety-inducing situation: ramble. “Which I guess doesn’t bode well for me in terms of being alive—unless you’re a zombie of course, but it doesn’t look like you’re rotting or hungry for brains or anything, which is actually unfortunate when you think about it because then it means that I might be dead too, though I’ve got a killer headache and aren’t you not supposed to feel pain when you—”

As she spoke, shock spread across his face, so clear with eyes widening and mouth slackening into a big “O” that it was almost comical. “Felicity,” he finally said, cutting her off. “What do you mean? I’m not dead!”

“Yes you are,” she explained to him calmly, as though he had simply forgotten that he had died almost four years previously. It was insane of course—you could hardly expect someone to forget their own death. Though if she was dead, she sure as hell didn’t remember how she got here. “You killed yourself in prison, remember?”

The lines in his forehead deepened. “But Felicity that—” he stopped suddenly, as though a thought had just occurred to him. “Baby, what’s the last thing you remember?”

What was the last thing she remembered? That was a good question. She decided to momentarily forget the mystery of her undead ex-boyfriend and consider the question’s answer. The pain in her head made it hard to think, but there was something else too. Every time she reached into her memory, it blurred. She could remember specific incidents—graduating high school, getting drunk on her 21st birthday—but they were muddled, as though there was no chronology to them. “I don’t know,” she was finally forced to admit.

“What year is it?” Cooper tried again.

To her surprise, her body answered the question before she even had a chance to think about it. “2012.”

“2012?”

Felicity winced at the tone of his voice. Guess it wasn’t 2012.

“Felicity, it’s 2019.”

If she’d been drinking something she would’ve done a spit-take. As it was, she felt the floor fall out from her stomach. “But that’s seven years in the future!” She pulled away from him, the panic in her chest increasing to a crescendo, until she struggled to take a breath. She looked desperately around the room, hoping for something—anything—to prove that he was wrong, that this was just a bad dream and soon she would wake up, in her familiar bed in Starling. “Cooper, what’s going on? Where are we?”

Finally, he answered her original question. “We’re in Stockholm.” He paused. “Well, actually we’re in a suburb outside of Stockholm but—”

“No,” Felicity interrupted him, clutching her head. “That’s not right. I was in Starling. I work in the IT department of Queen's Consolidated!”

“Hey, hey, it’s all right!” Cooper said, again wrapping his arms around her. He stroked her back and slowly, she found herself able to breath again. finally, when she had calmed down, he said softly: “Felicity, it's been nearly seven years since you worked in IT at Queen’s Consolidated, and you haven’t been in Star City for nearly a month.”

“Cooper,” Felicity said slowly, the words muffled somewhat by his chest. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”

* * *

_It was nearly eight pm before Oliver realized she was missing._

_The morning had been almost aggressively normal. He woke up, went for a run, and by the time he got back, Felicity was awake and eating breakfast. He’d kissed the top of her head and handed her the cup of coffee he’d bought on his way home, which she gratefully guzzled down like the caffeine addict she was. They’d finished getting ready and he had asked if she wanted a ride to Palmer Tech. She said no, that it was a beautiful day and she wanted to walk._

_It wasn’t until after he got home, until six in the evening, that he began to wonder where she was._

_It wasn’t until seven that he called the office after she wouldn’t pick up her phone, and discovered that she had texted saying that she wouldn’t be coming that day. It took him nearly twenty minutes to call everyone he could think of, and by the time he put out the order for the team to assemble at the bunker, it was nearly eight o’clock._

* * *

“I don’t know where to begin.” Cooper said shaking his head.

They had moved into the kitchen, Cooper holding her arm the whole way like she was an invalid. He had settled her into a chair and poured her a glass of water, insisting that she drink something.

“Was I in an accident?” Felicity asked, deciding to start with an easy question. She ran her finger along the rim of the cup, but didn’t take a sip. God, she wished it was coffee. Even with her splitting headache, there was something comforting about the warmth, the smell of a cup of coffee. “Is that why I can’t remember the last seven years?”

Cooper sighed, then nodded. “A car accident, about a week ago. There were no other injuries, but you hit your head pretty hard. You were unconscious for more than 36 hours.”

“Why aren’t I in a hospital?” Felicity tried to keep the judgement out of her voice, but really, it was a legitimate question—waking up with amnesia is not exactly a situation anyone expects to find themselves in, but especially not in a shabby apartment. No, that was the kind of discovery one expected to make in a hospital bed, surrounded by white walls, fluorescent lights, and the beeping of heart monitors.

“You were,” Cooper said. “At first.” Felicity raised an eyebrow, as Cooper rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “You were in and out of consciousness, and they were worried you had brain damage. They did a CT scan, an MRI, but everything looked normal. Once I heard that you were going to be okay, I sorta—well, I snuck you out.”

“I’m sorry, you what?” Felicity asked. Cooper had always had a bit of rebellious streak and healthy dose of suspicion of authority, but this seemed a step too far even for him. “You snuck me out of the hospital?”

He winced. “Look, I know it sounds bad, and it’s hard to explain, but it wasn’t safe there.”

“The hospital wasn’t a safe place for the girl who had just gotten into a car accident?” Felicity asked, her voice escalating to a crescendo. She stood up and took a step back. “This is too much. Why are we in Sweden? And you’re supposed supposed to be dead and—and I’m obviously not fine seeing as I have _fracking_ amnesia!”

“Baby, it’s all right,” Cooper said, standing up as well and taking a step toward her. He reached out, grasped her upper arms, and rubbed them soothingly. “We’re going to figure this out, you just need to calm down.”

She tried to pull away, but he held her there.

“Felicity, I can explain everything.”

She let him direct her back to the chair.

“Thank you. First of all, I’m not dead. I never killed myself in prison.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that.”

He winced again. “Sorry.”

She listened as he told her what happened—the NSA, the deal he made to keep her out of prison. How after working for them for eight years he finally gained his freedom. “The first thing I did when I got out was look you up,” he said, the palm of his hand still pressed against her arm, thumb kneading slow circles in her flesh. “You had moved on of course. I didn’t blame you, you thought I was dead after all, but for some reason I never expected to find you married.”

 _Married?_ The ringing in her ears set off by discovering second-hand that she was someone’s _wife_ almost made her miss Cooper’s next words.

“Yeah,” Cooper said sheepishly, and belatedly Felicity realized she must have voiced the question aloud. “I know, I know, you’re beautiful and brilliant so of course you’d be married, but it was still a shock.” Cooper paused, sighing. “At first I was planning on leaving you alone—I figured that dredging up the past wouldn’t do you any good—but I couldn’t help myself. I sent you a message.”

“How’d I react?” Felicity asked, running a hand along the edge of her mouth.

He smiled, a little ruefully. “Poorly, at first. You couldn’t believe that I let you think I was dead for almost a decade, that you’d been responsible for my death. You said you never wanted to see me again.”

It hit her like shot to the gut. Maybe married Felicity had different feelings, but for 2012 Felicity, Cooper was the only man she’d ever loved. She couldn’t imagine never wanting to see him again if he miraculously rose from the dead.

“So, I packed up my stuff and was about to leave the city for good when you knocked on my door.” Cooper laughed and glanced down at the table. “You were just about the last person I expected to see when I answered, and not just because I never told you where I was staying.” He paused again. “You looked rough, had a couple of cuts and bruises…”

“What happened?” She prodded, as he trailed off. He turned to stare at her. She was taken aback by the look in his eyes. The Cooper she’d known had never looked like that.

“Your husband isn’t a good man, Felicity.”

She sucked in her breath. Whatever she had been expecting it wasn’t that. “He was abusive?”

“It took us almost two years to plot your escape,” Cooper continued as though he hadn’t heard the question.

“Escape?” Felicity asked, though she was only half-listening. Her mind was occupied with trying to process the information. She was married to an abusive man. It was a strange thing to have to be told you’re a victim. It didn’t feel real, like an identity she had no right to claim.

“Your husband is a very powerful man. That’s why we’re in Sweden, that’s why it isn’t safe for you to stay in the hospital. If we leave even the smallest trace he’ll track us down”

 _Powerful man?_ Felicity had always assumed that she’d end up with an accountant or maybe a school teacher. Certainly not someone who required fleeing the country in order to leave them. “Who?”

Cooper was quiet a moment, and his hand fell away from her arm for the first time in the conversation.

"Cooper,” she could hear the trembling of her own words, and hoped that she’d be able to hold back the tears. “Who is my husband?”

Finally he spoke. Quietly, and to the table rather than her. “Oliver Queen.”

* * *

_Whoever had taken her was good—this much was clear approximately ten minutes into their investigation, when Curtis tried to pull security cam footage from her walk to work. Every file, from every camera, from every business along the five blocks from the loft to Palmer Tech had been wiped clean._

_“This is insane!” Curtis said, for the twelfth time in five minutes. “All of these cameras operate on completely different systems. They had to hack each one individually, and I mean the 7/11 no big deal, but she would’ve walked past two high end jewelry stores and an art museum! You know their security systems had to put up at least some kind of fight.”_

_There was sudden silence in the bunker as Oliver stopped his pacing. Across the way Curtis winced. “Not that I’m complimenting them or anything, just saying this took some serious time and effort.”_

_“So they’re good.” Oliver’s voice was stony._

_Curtis gulped. “Very.”_

_“And they targeted her?”_

_“Seems that way. The only cameras that went down lie in a two-block radius of her walk to work. Everything outside of that circle is working fine. It’s either targeted, or a crazy coincidence.”_

_Oliver swung around suddenly and punched the wall behind him._

* * *

_“Oliver Queen?!_ ” As she spoke the words, she had a strange feeling that someone else was saying them. That she had accidentally woken up in someone else’s body and this was all a very strange misunderstanding. _I can’t be married to Oliver Queen—he’s dead!_ One guy coming back from the dead, maybe, but two? This was getting more and more ridiculous.

But, even as she thought it, a memory tickled the edges of her periphery; the miraculous discovery on a deserted island, the dramatic rescue, the return to Starling. Yes, she was sure she remembered now, Oliver Queen had been recovered, a little worse for the wear, but pretty good for a guy who had survived for five years on an island in the middle of the North China Sea. _Very good_ , a pesky voice whispered as another memory—one of a very dapper-looking Oliver Queen stepping off the plane that brought him back to his home city, square jaw and buzzcut enough to make a girl swoon—surfaced in her mind. She took a sip of water and started sputtering as it went down the wrong hole.

Cooper was looking at her, a fact she realized belatedly as her mind rambled on about the broad shoulders and smoldering eyes of a certain billionaire shipwreck-survivor. “Do you remember Oliver Queen?”

Felicity shook her head. _I’ve never met him_ , was on the tip of her tongue before she realized that it was probably inaccurate if she had been married to the guy. “I remember that he was rescued….” she trailed off.

He nodded solemnly. “Queen’s more powerful than you can imagine.”

She swallowed. She could imagine a whole bunch of power: she worked for QC after all.

“He’s the mayor of Star City now—the police, the DA, everyone reports to him. That’s why you couldn’t go the authorities. He’s also got friends in Argus and other national agencies, not to mention his contacts on the less legal side of things. There’s tons of criminal syndicates operating in Star City, the Triad, the Bratva, the Italian mob, and rumor has it that Mayor Queen has his hand in all the pies.”

Felicity’s head was reeling. Not only was she married to Oliver Queen, not only was she married to the mayor, but she was also married to some sort of crime boss? she could feel the panic attack coming on, and took a couple deep, calming breaths to try and stave it off.

Noticing her consternation, Cooper stood up, a look of concern spreading across his face. “I think that’s enough for today, I realize it’s a lot to take in. You should probably get some more rest.”

Numbly, Felicity let herself be led out of the kitchen, back to the bedroom she had woken up in about a half an hour before.

“Here,” Cooper said, settling her back into the bed. “Try to get some rest.”

Felicity almost snorted. _Not likely,_ she thought, though her head was starting to spin, and before he had closed the door, she felt herself falling into unconsciousness.

* * *

_It was two days later they discovered that while certainly good, these people were not professionals, at least not when it came to snatching people off the side of the road. Dig was one who discovered their mistake, as he walked up and down the route Felicity would have taken to work. He came bursting into the bunker so out of breath that it took him a minute of panting before he was able to communicate what he’d found. “VHS tape.” he finally managed._

_“Uhh… what?” Curtis asked from his place at the computers._

_“Dig, what’s going on?” Oliver asked, trying not to let hope color his voice. “Did you find something?”_

_“VHS tape,” Dig repeated, reaching into his coat and pulling out the very thing._

_“Oh my god!” Curtis said, catching on._

_“What’s going on?” Oliver demanded again, as Curtis ran across the bunker and began shifting through some of Felicity’s boxes._

_“Aha!” Curtis yelled triumphantly pulling out a dusty VCR. “Felicity, you magnificent genius, thank god you don’t throw anything away!” Running back to the control station, he quickly hooked the VCR up to one of the monitors and grabbed the tape from Dig._

_“Will one of you please tell me what’s happening?” Oliver asked through clenched teeth._

_“We got lucky,” Dig said, clasping Oliver’s back, a small smile on his face. “Some shops in Star City are still living in the 90s, using CCTV cameras.”_

_“You mean…?”_

_“Closed circuit,” Curtis said. “As in, whatever the camera sees is directly recorded onto a VHS tape. All hard-copy, no computers, nothing digital—completely un-hackable.” With that, he hit play._

_The three of them anxiously watched the screen as it lit up with a busy street. Hundreds of people filed by on their daily commute, until—_

_“There!” Oliver said, pointing._

_Curtis slammed the pause button._

_Sure enough, there she was, plain as day. Her back was to the camera, but it was unmistakably Felicity with her blonde hair pulled back into a pony tail and wearing a tight pencil skirt and high heels._

_It was the first time Oliver had seen his wife in two days._

_Curtis continued the video, and they watched, breath held, as she walked out of frame, stopping only once to adjust her shoe._

_It was enough to get things rolling. After scouring her route, they found two more stores, a bodega and a place that sold tourist trinkets which had security cameras which still recorded directly onto film. On one of them, there was nothing—no Felicity—although they watched the tape a hundred times, searching frame by frame for any sign of her._

_It was the other one that gave them what they needed. Located in between the other two cameras, at first glance it was the same as the first, Felicity appeared, and then walked out of frame. But there was something different. Oliver was the one who caught it. As she walked, a man bumped into Felicity. She paused looking a little confused. After a moment, she took another step and wobbled._

_“Him!” Oliver said, pausing the video._

_“What, that guy?” Curtis asked, trying to zoom in, though it only served to pixelate the image beyond recognition._

_“He must have done something, pricked her with something.”_

_Sure enough, when Felicity began to walk forward again, it seemed more hesitant than before—slower, like she was having difficulty remaining on her feet._

_Dig was the one who noticed the white van trailing behind her, stopping as she paused, pressing her hand against streetlight and seemingly trying to reorient herself._

_“It had to happen on the next block,” Oliver said, fist clenched and focused on the screen in front of him. “The van pulls up to the side, they jump out and pull her in, and she’s too disoriented to fight back or make a scene.”_

_“And the street is so busy no one notices,” Dig added._

_“Almost the perfect plan,” Curtis said, fingers flying across the keyboard. “But not quite.” An image appeared on the screen—the van’s license plate, blurry, but legible. “We’ve got them.”_

* * *

When Felicity woke up, it was dark out. She blinked, and turned on the lamp on the bedside table. This time Cooper wasn’t sitting in the chair beside her. Gingerly, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. To her great relief, her headache seemed to be abating. She took a few cautionary steps. They were a little wobbly, but she managed to walk a few feet away, to stand in front of the door and the long mirror that was hooked over it.

Felicity examined her reflection carefully. A white bandage wrapped around the crown of her head seemed to be the only indication of the car accident, aside from a cut on her left eyebrow and some bruising under the eye itself. Biting her lip, she turned her attention to the rest of her face. Twenty-nine looked roughly the same as twenty-three, though she noticed a few more lines around her eyes and across her forehead. It had been a while since she’d had her hair colored—brown roots were starting to show at the base of her skull. She wondered about the things she couldn’t decipher from just looking at her face—did she still wear brightly colored lipstick with her hair pulled back in a pony tail?

Looking at the baggy shirt—almost certainly one of Cooper’s—and sweatpants she was wearing, it occurred to her that she didn’t even know what her style was anymore. Was she still in corporate mode, dressing in slick skirts paired with heels or maybe a cute pair of flats? Or perhaps with the reappearance of Cooper she had devolved back into the era of band t-shirts and ripped jeans. Or maybe it was something entirely new—a territory as of yet uncharted to her. Wife-of-a-billionaire chic? Chanel suits and Louis Vuitton bags?

A strange kind of mourning took over her. This wasn’t the sort of thing for which she could ask Cooper to fill in the gaps; even when they were together in college he hardly ever noticed what she was wearing. It was just a part of herself lost to universe, perhaps forever. She was glad to see that she still had the industrial piercing in her ear. It was evidence that at least some of 2012 Felicity still survived in this body.

She reached out and locked the door. Pausing for a moment to take a deep breath, she pulled the off the t-shirt and let it drop to the floor. A second later, the sweatpants followed as she kicked them off too. She looked at herself, biting her bottom lip as her eyes passed over every inch of bare skin as though she were a detective searching for clues. She had expected to find herself a little fuller around the middle, her body softening a bit as she entered her thirties, but to her surprise, if anything, she was more toned. She certainly wasn’t a fitness model, but she could see the outline of muscles in her stomach and her upper arms which hadn’t been there at twenty-three. _Looks like I finally managed to get myself to go to the gym three days a week_ , she thought wryly.There were other differences as well, these ones more in line with what she was expecting: a new mole or two and a constellation of light, near-invisible stretch marks that spiderwebbed out from the elastic waistband of her panties.

What really shocked her was the scars. Though they didn’t dominate her skin by any means, it was startling to see so many of them—it seemed she had managed to pick up more scars in seven years than she had in all of her previous twenty-three. Most of them were faint and general enough that it was nearly impossible to tell what had caused them, but there were others whose origins were starkly obvious—the puckered mark the size of a quarter on her shoulder, a similar wound on her lower back. Her stomach dropped as she recognized the ghosts of bullets. _Was Oliver Queen responsible for all these?_

She turned away from the mirror abruptly, unable to look at herself any more. As she reached down to pick up her shirt and pants she glanced to her left hip, and saw something she had missed on the first passover of her body—something written on her skin. The word was faint, and when she rubbed it with a finger, it smeared slightly. Pen ink. Strangely, it didn’t seem to be written in her handwriting which was small, neat, and loopy, but rather looked like it had been written by a child, the letters different sizes and skewed so the word lolled sharply to one side. It took her a moment to decipher the letters, scrawled as they were: “FIND.”

Find what? It was hardly a helpful note, but seemed too odd to discount.

Felicity was about to turn away when she noticed something else, under the letters—a dark spot poking out from her underwear. She pulled the waistband down just a touch to reveal a tattoo. Unlike the pen ink, it stood stark against her skin. It was an arrow—just a thin line with a hint of a point at one end and notching at the other. Sometime, in the past few years, she had gotten a tattoo of an arrow on her hip. She processed this information with a strange detachment. Obviously, at some point in her life, this arrow had meant enough to her to get it permanently drawn on her body, and despite wracking her brain for answers nothing seemed satisfactory. She’d always had a bit of a soft spot for Robin Hood—who didn’t?—but surely there was something else, something more meaningful behind it. Leaning in closer, Felicity saw that the arrow wasn’t black like most simple line tattoos but rather a deep, forest green.

Could the tattoo be part of the message somehow? _Find_ … find what? An arrow?

With a sigh, Felicity pulled her sweatpants back on and shrugged the shirt over her head. She unlocked the door. She was tired, and her headache was starting to return. She muddled her way back to the bed and collapsed on it, barely remembering to flick off the lamp. It wasn’t until later, when she was nearly asleep that the words entered her mind: _Find the Green Arrow_. She slipped into unconsciousness before she could ponder what they meant.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ***PLEASE READ*** So the moral of this story is don't start a fic before you totally have a plan bc I've changed some stuff since I originally posted the first chapter. Mia is not a thing here anymore--Oliver and Felicity are married but they haven't had her yet. Sorry about that.
> 
> Yikes guys. So this one got away from me a little bit. Sorry for the length.

“What’s your mother’s name?” Cooper asked.

“Donna Smoak,” Felicity answered without any hesitation. They were sitting side-by-side on the couch in the dingy living room of the small apartment.

“Where were you born?”

“Las Vegas.”

“Where did you go to college?” 

“Coop—”

“C’mon, Felicity. We need to establish a baseline, we need to see what you remember and what you don’t.”

Felicity rolled her eyes but reminded herself that Cooper was just trying to help. As far as she was concerned they’d established pretty clearly that everything before 2012 she remembered while everything after was a big old blank. “MIT.”

“When did we meet?”

“2005. I was a freshman” Felicity smiled at the memory. She was the only girl in her Performance Engineering of Software Systems class, and 16. Needless to say, it hadn’t exactly been a fun time, but Cooper made it bearable. Out of everyone he was the only one who hadn’t snickered behind her back, and the only one to get close enough to her to realize that she understood more than anyone one else in the class.

He nodded, and Felicity thought she caught the hint of a smile on his face as well. “Good. When did you graduate?”

Felicity frowned. This memory wasn't nearly as happy. It was only a few months after the Department of Education fiasco that left Cooper in federal prison, and only a few weeks after she’d been notified that he had hanged himself. “2008.”

“When did you start working at Queen Consolidated?”

“The next year—2009.” 

“What department?”

“IT.”

“When did you meet Oliver Queen?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Are you sure? Think hard, Felicity.”

_Think hard._ Like if she really concentrated she could conjure the memory from nothing. As if she hadn’t already tried _thinking hard_. “Cooper. I don’t remember meeting Oliver Queen. I don’t remember marrying him and I sure as hell don’t remember—”

“All right,” Cooper said, cutting her off and holding up his hands. “I just want to make sure.” He reached out and brushed a hand across her cheek.

Felicity felt a flutter in the pit of her stomach, and for the thousandth time she tried to work up the courage to ask the question she really wanted to. She could feel it, rolling around on the tip of her tongue, all she had to do was open her mouth and it would slide out. 

_Are we together?_

She swallowed it back down. Instead, she chose a more familiar course. “Cooper… Can I use your computer?”

Beside her, he tensed. “Felicity—”

“Look, I’m feeling better, and whatever I find, I’m up for it.”

“You threw up again this morning, and you’re still getting headaches. You can’t push it Felicity, you’re still recovering.” 

Well she could hardly argue with that. It had been four days since she woke up with amnesia. In that time, she’d regained consciousness sporadically, though inevitably it was only an hour or so before her head started to spin and she had to crawl back into bed. Cooper took this in stride, patiently making sure she ate and drank while she was awake and even helping her to the bathroom. In fact, if anything, Cooper had been a little smothering. She knew it was a terrible thought, especially given his endless patience with her condition, but she couldn’t stand being treated like an invalid, even if she technically qualified as one. This was the longest she had been awake—a whole two and half hours. Still, her head was feeling clear for the first time in days. “Coop—I need this. I promise, if I get tired or I feel a headache coming on, I’ll stop.”

He seemed to deflate. “Okay.”

Her face lit up in a bright smile.

“But no hacking, all right? If you slip up and he catches wind of—”

“No hacking!” Felicity readily agreed, holding up her right hand like she was swearing in court. When Cooper still looked a little hesitant she hit him with the puppy-dog eyes. “Cross my heart and hope to die?” she asked hopefully. When he still didn’t respond she continued. “Really, Coop, I promise I won’t try hacking anything, I mean, I’ve basically been out of the game for seven years and I don’t have any idea what the landscape of cybersecurity even looks like circa 2019, and—”

“Felicity, it’s okay. I trust you.” Cooper said, laughing. “Here.” He pulled out tablet from his bag which lay on the floor beside the couch and handed it over. “Just be careful.”

His words were nearly lost on her as she looked at the tablet. The first piece of technology she had held in effectively seven years. If she were being honest, she was a little disappointed that tablets even existed in 2019—that the world hadn't moved onto to something new like Iron Man holographic displays or computer chips that are directly installed in your brain—but none of that mattered, not really. She was holding a piece of herself. All she had to do was turn it on. 

* * *

_She should’ve known from the moment the man ran into her, the moment she felt the pinprick in her arm. Really, if she was Oliver or Dig she’d have known from the second time she caught sight of the same white van trailing behind her, going about ten miles slower than all the traffic around it. She should’ve felt it, had some instinctual reaction, hair standing on end, some undefinable pull in her gut. But alas, she wasn’t Oliver Queen or John Diggle, and her strengths tended in a definitively different direction._

_As it was, after almost being bowled over by a stranger, her first thought was “what an asshole.” He didn’t apologize or offer any help, after all, just kept on walking. Her second thought was that he must’ve had a pin, or something sharp poking out of the seams of his sports coat, because her arm stung._

_Figuring that some people out there were just grade-A jerks, she took a few steps, but stopped as a wave of dizziness overtook her. It was so consuming she almost couldn’t see straight. She reached out blindly, until her hand touched the cool metal of a lamp post. Gratefully, she leaned into it._

_After a moment, the dizziness cleared slightly, and she took a couple more steps. It was only when the second wave hit that she realized something must be wrong, She reached into her pocket, fumbling with the snap, and pulled out her phone. She could hardly see the screen but all she had to do was call Oliver. Tell him that something was wrong, that something bad was about to happen, and he would handle the rest._

_She unlocked the phone, but suddenly it disappeared from her hand._

_“I don’t think so, love,” a voice whispered in her ear._

_She looked up, and through the spots, saw a tall man. Her phone was in his hand and she watched as it disappeared into his pocket._

_She opened her mouth to let out a sound of protest, but it seemed her vocal cords had stopped working. Perfect._

_The man grabbed her elbow roughly, and suddenly they were moving towards the edge of street. Somewhere inside her head, alarm bells were ringing, and she knew that this move was bad, that it was dangerous, but she couldn’t quite remember why through the dizziness that was taking over. If the man hadn’t been there she would’ve collapsed, but he wound his free hand around her waist, and leaned her weight against him._

_By the time he shoved her in the back of the van, she had lost the battle to the dizziness and everything faded to black._

* * *

Oliver prowled impatiently back and forth on the roof of the high rise. Night had fallen, and the wind was starting to pick up. It wasn’t able to penetrate the thick leather of his Green Arrow suit, but he was able to feel it on his face and could hear it whistling through the tall buildings. 

“Stop that,” Thea snapped from behind him. “Oliver, you’re going to drive yourself crazy.”

“It’s been two hours,” he growled back to her. 

He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see Dig’s comforting presence. “Take it easy, man,” he whispered. “Curtis will let us know when it’s time.”

A brief second of static rippled through Oliver’s earpiece then, followed by Curtis’s voice. _“We’re almost there. There’s one other person working late on his floor but she’s packing up now.”_

This news did little to ease the tension holding Oliver’s body taut, but he managed to halt his incessant pacing. A moment later though, he was back at it again.

Thea groaned and pressed a finger to the comm unit in her ear. “Please tell me it’s time. If it takes much longer Green Arrow’s going to explode.” 

_“Hold on, Speedy, she’s exiting the building now,”_ Curtis said. _“Ok, you guys are good to go. I’ve disabled the electronic locks and looped the security cameras. You guys should be invisible.”_ He paused a moment. _“Get her back.”_

Oliver grunted in acknowledgement, already moving towards the door which led to the inside. True to Curtis’s word, it opened easily. 

In a moment, Oliver was through the door, followed quickly by Dig and Thea. They made their way through the building nearly silently, Curtis guiding them softly over the comms to avoid the few custodians working the night shift. By the time they reached the thirteenth floor, Oliver had drawn his bow and notched an arrow.

“Oliver,” Dig said softly, as Oliver reached for the door that would lead them from the stairwell to the offices on the other side. “Are you up for this, man? Thea and I—”

“I’m fine.”

Oliver didn’t need to turn around to see the incredulity in Dig’s expression—he could feel it on his back.

“Oliver—”

“Later.” Oliver said in a tone that left no room for argument. With that, he pushed the door open.

Dig and Thea followed him through the door. 

_“Take a right,”_ Curtis whispered in his ear as Oliver led them through the winding path of cubicles and dark offices. _“There! It’s the corner office with the windows.”_

Oliver held up his hand to get the two behind him to stop. They hugged the wall, watching the light flickering through half-open office blinds and slipping under the door. Muffled sounds came from within. Oliver glanced to his right, to the placard on the door: Callum Whitehead.

* * *

_“Callum Whitehead,” Curtis said triumphantly as soon as Dig and Oliver walked into the bunker._

_“Excuse me?” Dig asked, crossing his arms._

_Thea, who was leaning over Curtis’s shoulder, stood up and handed Oliver a folder. “Callum Whitehead,” she repeated. “He’s a Vice President of Greyfox Security International. He’s the director of Star City Operations.” Thea pointed to Curtis's computer screen, which displayed a picture of the man. He was middle-aged, balding, and slightly portly._

_“The van?” Oliver asked, his heart skipping a beat as he opened the folder and scanned its contents. They had been searching for the owner for weeks._

_“Registered to a shell company which is owned by another shell company,” Thea said, but Oliver could hear the excitement in her voice.“And about twenty shell companies later we get to Grace Whitehead, CEO of Enterprising Solutions LLC.”_

_Dig snorted. “Real specific name.”_

_Thea ignored the interruption.“And Grace here is married to one—“_

_“Callum Whitehead. Who works for a security firm,” Curtis finished._

_“More like mercenaries,” Oliver said darkly, reading the overview of Greyfox in the file._

_“Exactly. They’ve got to be the ones who took Felicity. We’ve got her.” A smile spread across Curtis’s face._

_“Not yet,” Dig, said, reading over Oliver’s shoulder. “Firms like this work for clients. They may have taken Felicity but I doubt they’re still holding her.”_

_“They know who has her.” Oliver said, his voice hard. “He knows.” He tapped his finger against the screen. “And he’s going to tell us.”_

* * *

At Oliver’s cue, They burst into the office. The man on the inside looked up, shock spreading across his face. He reached for his desk drawer, but before he could open it, Oliver shot an arrow through his shoulder. The man’s chair swiveled backwards from the force of the blow, but stayed upright. His left hand came up to cradle the wound, but it only took a moment for blood to seep through his fingers. His face was a grimace of pain, and he let out a low moan.

Oliver was unmoved—his bow still pointed at the man, another arrow notched, grip unwavering. “The next one goes through your heart.” The voice modulator made his voice even deeper than usual.

Seeming to sense the precariousness of the situation, Dig stepped forward. “Callum Whitehead?”

“What do you want?” The man ground out, teeth gritted against the pain. 

“Information. A month ago Greyfox Security kidnapped a woman—Felicity Smoak.” 

“Kidnapped…? What are you talking about?” The man looked wildly from side to side. “I don’t anything about a kidnapping!” 

Oliver pushed Dig aside. “Lie again and you lose a kneecap.” His voice was low, but there was no doubting the honesty of it. 

The man swallowed, but his eyes met Oliver’s defiantly. “We work security for celebrities and parties! We aren’t kidnappers!” 

Oliver lowered his bow, knowing that Thea’s own bow as well as Dig’s gun remained locked on the man in front of him. He stepped around the desk until he was only inches from him.

Callum cowered from Oliver’s intimidating presence, but there was no where to go: his chair was already pressed firmly against the wall behind him. 

“A month ago Felicity Smoak was forced into a white van, and no one has seen or heard from her since. That van was registered to your wife, Grace Whitehead.”

“S-she doesn’t—” the man stuttered, but Oliver continued right through him.

“So here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to answer my questions, or I’m going to go to your house and ask her.”

“She-she has nothing to do with this!” 

“I guess we’ll find out.” Oliver’s voice was flat and he turned from the man, moving as though to leave the office. 

“Wait!” Callum cried out desperately. “Stop!”

Oliver turned back slowly. “Greyfox kidnapped Ms. Smoak.”

It wasn’t a question, but the man nodded emphatically anyway. 

“Who hired you?” It was Dig, trying again to take over the interrogation.

“I don’t know!” 

Oliver swung his bow back up, drawing back the string. 

“It’s the truth, I swear! About two months ago, we were contacted by an organization who promised us a million dollars to take her—Ms. Smoak—but the communication was all electronic, through proxies. We never met face-to-face.” 

“You kidnapped a woman for someone you’ve never met?” Oliver growled.

“They paid us two hundred thousand dollars up front.” He didn’t even sound ashamed. 

Oliver’s finger was itching to release the arrow, but he resisted. For the moment at least. “I want all of your communications with them—all of your files on Ms. Smoak, the kidnapping, everything.” 

The man swallowed nervously. “They’re gone. After we handed off Ms. Smoak, a virus infiltrated our system. Every gigabyte of data on our servers was erased.”

_“He’s telling the truth, Green Arrow.”_ Curtis’s voice sounded through the earpiece. _“I’m in their system now. It’s an absolute mess, but there’s nothing here that’s more than a few weeks old, not even meta-data.”_

Oliver took a breath and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Tell me then. Everything you know.”

“They’re tech savvy and well-organized. They had the whole thing planned out—took care of the location, security footage, everything. All they needed was muscle and transport.” 

“Well-funded too,” Thea muttered behind Oliver. “If they can drop a million bucks on a van and a couple of guys.”

“They never sent the rest of the million. After they blew up our system, we never heard from them again.”

“Shame,” Thea said sarcastically. 

“You said you handed her off,” Oliver said, unwilling to let the conversation get off-track. “When and where?”

“After the van picked her up, they drove directly to the docks. Handed her to a couple of guys there.”

_“We’ve got trouble,”_ Curtis said over comms. _“Someone must have heard you and called 911. Police are en route now.”_

“Who were they?” Oliver ignored Curtis. “Tell me who you gave her to!” He was shouting.

“Dock workers? I don’t know!” 

“It’s time to go, Green Arrow.” Dig’s voice, but Oliver wasn’t listening. 

“TELL ME!”

“I don’t know anything else, I swear!” 

“Green Arrow.” Dig’s hand gripped Oliver’s shoulder.

Oliver took a deep breath. In the distance he could hear sirens. Thea was already in the doorway, looking back at him. Though she wore a mask, Oliver knew that her expression was full of concern for him. He turned back to the man in the chair. “Tomorrow, in the paper, I’m going to read that Greyfox Security has donated two hundred thousand dollars to charity, or I will be back to finish the job.” 

Something flashed in Callum’s eyes. There was a finite number of indignities the man was willing to suffer it seemed, and Oliver had reached the limit. “I know who you are,” the man said defiantly. “You don’t kill people—not anymore.”

Oliver released his arrow, and it shot into the man’s other shoulder. “I’ll make an exception for you.”

And they were gone.

* * *

Felicity took off her glasses and rubbed her temples. Her eyes were starting to ache from prolonged staring at the tablet in front of her. She had spent the last four hours and twenty-three minutes obsessively reading every article she could find regarding the past seven years of her life. There were a lot. _Holy frack there were a lot_. Apparently she had gone from absolute nobody wiling away her days in the basement of QC to CEO of a Fortune 500 company and media darling. She was the Princess Diana of Star City (which she’d learned replaced the name “Starling” which created far more confusion for retrograde amnesiacs than it had any right to), ascending from humble origins to city royalty, or, depending on who was writing the article, the Camilla Parker Bowles, who broke up a meant-to-be couple with her short skirts and womanly wiles.

Here was the course her life had taken near as she could figure it: she had wallowed in relative obscurity until 2013, when she had been unexpectedly and unbelievably promoted to Oliver Queen’s executive assistant. During this time, she began to be photographed with him at different events (often in beautiful, stunning gowns that she knew for a fact she shouldn’t have been able to afford) and rumors began circulating that they were sleeping together. 

But wait—plot twist! Oliver Queen managed to lose his family’s company (though she hated to admit it, Felicity was a little disappointed to discover that she hadn’t in fact married a billionaire, merely an ex-billionaire). She slipped under the media’s radar for the next few months, until she emerged again, this time as the girlfriend of a _different_ incredibly rich, attractive man: Ray Palmer. They seemed happy enough until Ray Palmer died, leaving his insanely important and successful business in her hands. 

After that tragedy, she had, at some point, begun seeing Oliver Queen (maybe for the second time?). They got engaged, she got shot and paralyzed, they broke up, she got a chip implanted in her spine that allowed her to walk again, Oliver Queen announced that he had a secret love child from nearly a decade ago, they got married. 

You know, just like Cinderella. 

In short, sometime in the past seven years her life had turned into a fracking soap opera. 

It was what wasn’t reported in _Us Weekly_ or Page Six that really intersted Felicity, though. Of course there were no whispers of anything approaching abuse in the articles about her marriage to Oliver Queen, which tended to be fawning, presenting them as a fairytale couple, or critical about her own role in the relationship, thanks to her aforementioned womanly wiles (sexism, Felicity was disappointed to discover, was alive and well in 2019), but there were moments that she couldn’t account for, no matter how much she tried. 

Why, why, why would she accept a role as Oliver Queen’s EA? Though technically speaking it was a promotion, not only did it have absolutely no relation to the direction she saw her career taking, but it was the best way to ensure that even if she achieved her career goals, she would forever be a joke. Who cares about the genius level IQ, the _two_ masters degrees attained from MITbefore the age of twenty, everyone would always assume she’d gotten to where she was by sleeping with the boss.

There was also the matter of her getting shot in very vague circumstances, and the breakup that came less than a month later. Though she scoured the web, no one seemed to know precisely what caused this rift, which left her to believe that either Oliver Queen didn’t want to be engaged to a paraplegic and broke up with her (which, _ick_ ), or, that she had left him for some undetermined reason—possibly because he wasn’t an innocent victim in the shooting—though she had no evidence aside from her own gut. 

Eager to learn more about her injury than the bare bones presented in the news, she maybe kinda broke her promise to Cooper and hacked Starling General’s ( _Star City_ General’s, she reminded herself) database for her medical records. It wasn’t exactly the NSA, but she was surprised at how easy it was—her fingers writing code before her mind could totally comprehend what they were doing. In about two minutes she was clicking through her file. She wasn’t sure what she expected to find, but this certainly wasn’t it. There was the lengthy bit from her paralysis—surgical records, X-rays, and hundreds of lab results—but aside from that, next to nothing. All the scars she had found on her body, only one was accounted for. The rest... who knows? It seemed impossible that there were no records at all, not even ones that listed cliché explanations like “ran into a door” or “tripped down the stairs.” Certainly some of the scars—the bullet wound on her shoulder for example—would’ve required medical attention?

An irritation spread through her, starting in the pit of her stomach. She hated mysteries. They tugged at her consciousness demanding to be solved—and this, _her life_ , was the biggest mystery she’d ever encountered. But there was something else too, something more than the endless tabloid articles that despite their extreme abundance told her nothing, and the missing medical records. Looking around guiltily, as though what she was doing was unforgivable, Felicity clicked play on a video opened on one of the tabs on the tablet.

Immediately, Oliver Queen’s voice filled her ears. It was warm and calm, and above all, _familiar_. She let herself be surrounded by the sound and only half listened as he talked about not giving in, about fighting the darkness.

She had watched the video a dozen times. It was one of the first things she had found in her search—the video of her (first) engagement to Oliver Queen. 

_“And I’m grateful for each one of you!”_ Oliver paused. _“There is one person in particular that I am grateful for.”_

The Felicity on the screen gestured to herself, half smiling at the crowd in front of them. 

_“You.”_

The real Felicity’s heart started beating faster, and she bit her bottom lip. 

_“Someone that has stood beside me when times were darkest. She is the one who lights my way.”_

Oliver turned to look at on-screen Felicity.

_“Felicity Smoak…”_

He got on his knee and she started laughing, hands clasped in front of her face. 

_“Will you make me the happiest man on the face of the earth?”_

Seemingly overcome, she nodded.

_“Yes?”_

_“Yes.”_

She knelt down to meet him. They kissed. He slipped a ring on her finger. 

Real Felicity paused the video. After a moment’s hesitation, she backed it up and hit play once more,

The video was an anomaly; they were an intensely private couple. For all the endless prattle of gossip columnists, they couldn’t tell Felicity how or when she met Oliver, when they started dating, why they broke up, when or where they got married. But then there was this—this video of Oliver Queen declaring his love for her. Of him asking her to marry him in front of a crowd, captured for posterity by news cameras. 

She had read all the research, all the expert’s accounts of abusive relationships. She knew that what’s on the outside is not at all indicative of what’s on the inside, but even if she didn’t know him, didn’t remember their relationship, she knew herself. And she couldn’t account for what she saw in on-screen Felicity. Not a moment of regret, of hesitation, only joy. A genuine, intense, earth-shattering joy to be marrying this man. 

“Felicity.” 

For a moment she thought it was the video, that she had pressed play yet again without realizing it, but it wasn’t Oliver’s voice, but Cooper’s. 

Quickly, she exited out of the tab and turned the tablet off.

“Find anything interesting?” he asked.

She wiped her eyes before turning to him. “Not really.” 

* * *

_Felicity awoke in a small room. Like really small—like if she stuck out her arms she could touch either wall small. Well, maybe not, but it would be close. She sat up, her head pounding, and looked around. The room was empty aside from a twin bed (on which she currently sat) shoved in one corner. Across from her, there were two doors, one made of heavy metal, with a slat at bottom which looked like it could slide open, and the other just regular wood._

_She rolled to her feet and tried to stand. Everything was wobbly, and she stumbled the couple of steps to the doors. She reached for the metal one, and was unsurprised when it was held firm against her. Locked. The other door however, opened easily. Inside was a tiny bathroom—just enough space for a small sink and toilet._

_This was an incredibly good discovery, because Felicity suddenly realized that she was going to puke. She dropped to her knees and was retching almost before she hit the ground. After she was finished, she leaned her head against the cool porcelain of the sink. The spinning in her head was beginning to abide, and she finally felt able to properly absorb her surroundings._

_She had been kidnapped. Again._

_Her first thought upon realizing this was that Oliver was going to kill her. Her second thought was that, no, he was going to kill whoever did the kidnapping._

_She barely had time to think either of these thoughts before her head was back in the toilet, vomiting again. This time when the nausea faded, it occurred to her that perhaps the vomiting was due to more than the after-effects of whatever they had drugged her with. A moment of concentration confirmed her suspicions: the floor was rocking beneath her. Her stomach sank._

_She was on a fracking boat._

_“Okay, okay,” she told herself. “You’re on a boat. That’s fine. You were kidnapped, and now you’re on a boat headed to… well, somewhere. You were kidnapped and now you’re on a boat that has, most likely, left Star City and is taking you to an unknown location where unknown persons will do unknown things to you for some, unknown reason.” Even by herself, she rambled, though some part of her knew it for it was it was—a coping mechanism hoping to drown out the fear at what she understood. That if her kidnappers had taken her out of Star City it made Oliver’s job of finding her exponentially more difficult._

_It was becoming increasingly clear that this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill, mid-level badies kidnap the mayor’s wife kind of deal, where Oliver and the team would find her in some abandoned warehouse in the Glades and she’d be home in time to watch the new Doctor Who. No, this was well-funded, well-planned, and well-executed. Which probably meant she was on her own until she found a way to send the team a message. Frack. Double frack._

_Her thoughts were interrupted by the screeching of metal against metal. Quickly, she left the bathroom (wobbling less than before—it seemed her sea-legs were finally appearing), just in time to see the slat at the bottom of door slide shut. “Wait!” She cried desperately, pounding her fists against the door, but whoever it was had left._

_On the ground by the door was a tray containing what looked like a sandwich and a glass of water. Her stomach growled and she was reminded that she had just puked up her breakfast, which had been the only thing she’d eaten in who-knows-how-long._

_Gingerly she took the sandwich in her hand and sniffed it. It didn’t smell suspicious, but then, she wasn’t really sure what a suspicious sandwich would smell like. She opened it up and it seemed to be just regular ham and cheese. After a moment’s internal debate, she took a small bite. It tasted okay, like what you would expect from super-market ham. She took a sip of the water. That tasted a bit metallic, but she figured that had to be par for the course on a boat._

_She finished the food and water, and actually started to feel better. With some food in her stomach it was a whole lot easier to consider her options, which unfortunately weren’t many. On a closer examination of the room, she found two small cameras screwed into opposite walls. So they were watching her. Good to know. That basically ruled out any escape attempt—in a moment her captors would see what she was doing and sound the alarm. Not that an escape attempt was likely, she was on a boat after all—what would she do even if she made it out of the room? Commander the ship and pilot it home? Jump into the ocean? Neither seemed like good options._

_Felicity’s head started to spin again, and she walked back to the bed. When the spinning got worse, it became clear that it wasn’t just nausea, but something more intense._

_They had drugged the food. Of course they had drugged the food._

_Well, there wasn’t much she could do about it now, so instead, she collapsed onto the mattress and let the darkness take her._

_She wasn’t sure how long it was before she awoke, but when she did she was still in the same tiny cabin. A new tray of food was sitting by the metal door._

_Well. She wasn’t falling for that again. Instead, she paced up and down the cabin (only getting about four steps in either way). After a few hours of that, she started making faces at the security camera, and by the time a few more hours passed, she was lying on the bed staring at the ceiling._

_One thing TV and movies failed to show about kidnappings was the sheer boredom involved. Felicity almost hoped they would reach port soon, just to break up the tedium. At that moment, she heard the tell-tale screech of the door panel opening._

_She scrambled out of the bed. “Hello?” she asked, diving for the slat. “Who are you?”_

_But again, there was no response from the other side, as the person there merely pulled back the old tray and replaced it with a new one, before sliding the panel closed again._

_The sandwich looked exactly the same as the last one she had eaten, but Felicity felt her mouth water. It had been hours since that last meal—possibly 24 hours if they were only feeding her twice a day. But even the pangs in her stomach weren’t enough to make her touch the food._

_No, she needed to stay alert. She needed to come up with a plan to get out of this._

_She held out for two days. It was the water that did her in. When her tongue was so dry it felt like a scrub brush and she had spent twenty minutes convinced that she wasn’t locked in a tiny cabin on a ship at all but was actually home, with Oliver, eating his chicken cacciatore and drinking a glass of Lafite Rothschild, she decided that hallucinating from dehydration had to be just as bad as being knocked out and she took a sip of the water._

_She wasn’t sure how long she spent on the ship. Her days became so similar they bled together without any distinction separating one from the other. She woke up, tried to ignore the food for as long as possible, though usually her stomach was already growling when she opened her eyes. When she finally gave in, she had about an hour before the drugs fully hit and she was out again, only to wake some time later and do it all again._

* * *

“You wanna talk about it?” Dig asked. They were in the bunker, the only two left. Oliver had finally insisted Thea and Curtis return home after hours of scouring security footage at the docks, entry and exit logs, as well as ship manifests had led them to an overwhelming dead end. 

Oliver didn’t say anything, just continued what he was doing—unstringing his bow and packing away in its case.

“Let me rephrase that.” Dig moved to stand in front of Oliver, arms crossed against his chest, forcing the other man to address him. “We’re going to talk about this right now.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.” It was half-hearted at best, but Oliver was to exhausted to be creative.

“Nothing to talk about—Oliver you put two arrows in that man! You threatened his wife!”

“We got the information.” It may have been paltry in comparison to what they were hoping for, but they had gotten the information. And any information was worth its weight in gold. They were the only ones still investigating her disappearance after all—Star City PD had all but given up the search. He saw it in the detectives’ eyes when they spoke to him—that if he wasn’t technically their boss they’d close the case. As far as they were concerned, they knew what happened. Felicity had left him. She had done it before after all, and who better to erase security camera footage than the woman with a degree in cybersecurity from MIT? 

“You busted in there and put an arrow through his shoulder before we had a chance to ask him a question, Oliver.” 

Again Oliver didn’t speak. 

“I haven’t seen that man in a long time—nearly seven years,” Dig continued. “Is this what you think she would want? A return to post-island Oliver? Closed off and violent?”

Oliver’s jaw tightened. “I don’t know what she wants. She’s not here.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it. You’re making excuses because you _know_ she’d be ashamed if she had seen you tonight, man.”

“He kidnapped her!” Oliver was suddenly on his feet. “I don’t care if he was just a middleman.” He took a furious step forward so he and Dig were chest-to-chest. “He drugged her, put her in a van, and handed her off with no qualms, not a modicum of guilt for what he was doing!” Oliver’s voice broke but he kept going. “What do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? I’m not.”

Dig waited a moment for Oliver to calm down, for his breaths to return to normal. “I’m not saying he didn’t deserve what he got, Oliver.” His own voice was calm—soothing and reassuring in that way that was a particular specialty of Dig’s. “I’m saying you’re better than that.”

Oliver collapsed heavily on the bench behind him. He dragged a hand across his face and tried to battle down the emotions that he had kept staunchly locked away for nearly a month. “You’re right.” Oliver felt Dig’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently. “But only when she’s here.”

Above him, Dig froze. “What?” 

“There was time when I thought I couldn’t be with her and be the Green Arrow, but it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that it’s the other way around.”

Dig’s hand dropped from his shoulder and Oliver was surprised how much he missed its comforting presence. “Don’t you dare put this on her, man. You have a conscience of your own, use it.”

“If she’s not with me I can’t be the Green Arrow.”

Dig sighed. “Oliver—”

“You’re right, John. What happened tonight was unacceptable—it can’t happen again.”

“What are you saying, man?” 

Oliver snapped the lock on his bow case closed. He took a deep breath. “I’m saying that if we don’t find her I’m done—with all of it.” He looked up at Dig. “I’m done with the Green Arrow.” 

* * *

_This time when she woke up, she wasn’t on the boat. Or, if she was, she was in a new room. This room was bigger than the last, and not nearly as bare, though the items it contained didn’t exactly bode well—medical equipment evenly spaced out on sterile metal trays, a heart monitor, an overhead light on a moveable arm, like you would find in a dentist office or an operating room._

_Felicity’s heart sank. This was not good. In fact, this was basically the worst thing she could imagine waking up to. She tried to sit, but realized that she was strapped down—her wrists locked in separate sets of handcuffs attached to railings on the table where she lay. She jiggled them a few times, but they stayed firmly in place, allowing her wrists only a few inches of movement. Her ankles were locked in as well, though she couldn’t see by what._

_“Hi, Felicity,” a voice said, and a figure stepped into her line of vision, looming down at her._

_Felicity groaned._

_“C’mon, Felicity—is that any way to greet an old friend? Or maybe you prefer Mrs. Queen now.”_

_“Cooper.” She knew she shouldn’t feel relief at the sight of her psychotic ex-boyfriend, but when you’re expecting Damien Darhk, or Slade Wilson or any one of the innumerable people the_ _Green Arrow has pissed off over the years, psycho-ex seems decidedly like the lesser of two evils. Besides, barring the whole kidnapping her and her mother and threatening their lives thing, she really didn’t think that he would hurt her. “What do you want?”_

_“I need your help.”_

_This old song. Felicity tried not to let her annoyance show. “Okay let’s get this over with. What do you need this time? Someone to hack into some super-secret government agency? The world bank? Disney—because I’ve heard their system is no joke—”_

_“I need your bi-numeric algorithm.”_

_“My super-virus? Again? Jeez, Coop, find a new line.”_

_Cooper slammed something loud and metal outside her line of vision and she jumped, as much as she able given her restraints at least. “Damn it, Felicity, this isn’t a joke! They’ll kill me if I don’t give it to them!”_

Them? _Who had Cooper pissed off this time? Despite herself, she felt a twinge of sympathy._

_“Cooper, if you’re in trouble, I can help. The Green Arrow—”_

_“Yeah, I don’t think he’s exactly itching to save me.”_

_“You don’t know him.”_

_Cooper was silent a moment. He had stepped out of her line of vision, so she couldn’t see him._

_When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “If you want to help me, write the damn program.”_

_“Fine!” Felicity said. “Just give me a computer.” Whatever it took to make this end quicker. She had spent God-knows how long stuck on that damn boat and Oliver must be losing his mind with worry. She could always write a line of code that would make the whole system go caput when she activated it remotely. Cooper was good, but Felicity was better._

_“Not so fast,” Cooper said, again stepping close to the table, so she could see his face._

_Frack—had he always had that smug look? How had she ever dated him?_

_“You’re crazy if you think I’m letting you anywhere near a computer after what happened last time.”_

_“Well, Coop, I hate to point out the obvious, but I’m going to need a computer unless you expect me to re-create pages and pages of code with a pen and notebook paper.”_

_“Oh, you’ll have a computer, but first, I’m going to put this in your head.” He held up something between his thumb and forefinger._

_“Um… is that a microchip?” Felicity asked, trying not to let fear seep into the words. Okay, scratch the whole lesser-of-two-evils thing, Cooper was going full-on super-villain._

_“It’s actually a bio-stimulant chip, not unlike the one currently in your spine. Well actually, bio-repressent might be more accurate. Whereas your chip connects previously disconnected nerve endings, this dampens them.”_

_Well, that wasn’t ominous. “And what exactly are you trying to… repress?” She was pretty sure she didn’t want to know the answer._

_“Your memories. All I have to do is insert the chip right here,” he tapped a spot on her forehead, above her eye. “And I have access to your entire cerebral cortex. I can block any neuron paths I want.”_

_Felicity’s stomach dropped out of her. “Are you talking about—”_

_“Induced amnesia. You’d be amazed how exact this little guy can be. Five, ten, fifteen years—anything I want—gone in the blink of an eye.”_

_“Cooper,” she kept her voice as steady as possible—calm, comforting, and non-judgmental._ _“You have to realize that’s insane.”_

_“I’m sorry Felicity.” He had turned away again. “But it’s the only way. Don’t worry though, I’ll put you under first—you won’t feel a thing.” He turned back around, holding a face mask attached to a long tube._

_Felicity began to struggle violently against her restraints, but it didn’t matter—in a second, he had secured the mask around her head. She threw her head back and forth, trying to shake it off, but it held on tight._

_Cooper reached behind him, to a large tank with small nozzle. He began to turn it._

_Desperately, Felicity stretched out her hand the few inches the cuff would allow and managed to snag the hem of his shirt. She jerked it down with all the force she could muster. The move caught Cooper off guard, and he almost smacked his nose against the table’s railings._

_He recovered himself quickly though and came up swinging, landing a punch to the side of Felicity’s face._

_She let go of his shirt and fell back against the table, stars clouding her vision._

_“You shouldn’t have done that,” Cooper said, but Felicity wasn’t listening._

_Something had fallen onto the table during the scuffle—something that was currently lodged under her left hip. She shifted slightly, until her left hand was able to grab it. A pen. Felicity almost cried. Quickly she flicked off the cap, praying to any gods who might be listening that Cooper wouldn’t hear it fall against the floor._

_Luckily, he was preoccupied, having turned back to the large canister of gas._

_She had seconds, maybe less. What could she write in that time to give her some clue of whatever he might erase?_

_She heard a high-pitched squeak as he began to turn the nozzle._

_In a flash of inspiration, she remembered her green arrow tattoo. With some effort she scrunched up her skirt until she had access to the the skin above her hip. The world was already starting to fade, she couldn’t see what she was doing, and her arm was turned nearly out its socket to give her the right angle, but she wrote the one word she had time to._

_The last thing she heard before the world went dark, before the pen clattered to floor alongside the cap, was Cooper’s voice. “See you on the other side, Felicity.”_


End file.
